Does anybody here remember when Polaroid made an instant, black and white, 35mm slide film? Show of hands?
Way back in 1983 Polaroid introduced three different 35mm film stocks, a small "developing" device, and little packs of developer goo.
Here's a link to their ad: https://www.flickr.com/photos/90900361@N08/50146901667
We made it a point to play with everything that came out, film-wise, to see if we could pull different looks from the different film stocks. The one I used from Polaroid was PolaPan CT Black and White Transparency film. It was rated at 125 ISO. It was described as a general purpose, fine-grained, black and white, panchromatic film and it came only in 36 exposure rolls.
I should emphasize to folks who were used to using the Polaroid sheet films as test materials for their film shoots that these rolls didn't fit into that category because you needed to shoot all 36 frames before you put the roll into the hand cranked processor, added the goo pack and developed the film. Well, I guess if your funding was more or less unlimited you could have shot a couple of test shots, developed the roll and just ignored the potential of having 36 frames.... (digression).
My friend, Joe, was in the studio over on San Marcos St. where marketing guru, Jim Reynolds and I were shooting images for upcoming stage shows. Joe was one of the premier actors we were working with and since I had him in the studio I thought it would be cool to shoot a roll of this new, weird film.
I fired off a bunch of frames. Some of Joe laughing and some, like this, with a serious look. I can't remember which camera I was using at the time but I'm pretty certain that there was a 100mm or 105mm lens involved.
After we hit the end of the roll, Joe, Jim and I moved onto to our regular photo shoot using some random medium format camera system.
My assistant dutifully rewound the exposed Polaroid film, carefully loaded it into the developer module and inserted the requisite goo pack. She the proceeded to "soup" the instant film and a few minutes later we gathered around to look at what seemed quite cool back then. Transparency film in our hands in less than five minutes. You did need to let it dry and the emulsion is quite delicate but it does scan nicely and I love the long tonal range.
I have images of three or four friends that I made in the studio over the course of a few weeks. I don't what happened to the developer gadget but the film was expensive and didn't seem practical to me at the time so we kind of abandoned it.
Today I was digging through a folder of "friends and family" photographs and I came across the sheet of Joe's images. I just had to try a scan. It brought back what were to me the golden age of live theater in Austin. Before everything got overly "professional."
Just thought you'd be interested in this weird product extension by Polaroid. And...it was really fun to play with at the time. 1983. That's over 40 years ago. Time flies when you have a camera in your hands.
Comments
Eric
When it was first out, the rep had a friend and me shoot a couple of the short color on a short stroll though downtown. We came back and in a few minutes showed them on the screen. Wow! State of the art in my home town out in the sticks.
For the next couple of years it was the rage to bring along a few rolls while doing field workshops especially as we didn't need to spend the night souping E6. The b&w was superb and I probably still have a few. OTOH, the color had its own look-and-feel. It was basically a B&W emulsion put behind a lenticular scene. I would characterize it as the 1980s version of Autochrome.
Landscape pix were etherial in their looks.Duping the film took effort. But the nearly-instant process to projection was the cat's meow!
At the time, my photo sideline was in multi-image projection with dissolves, projector banks, synced music. At the local group, I was the outlier with my fine-art work using the Polaroid transparency films and it was fun while it lasted.
Here's one for you Mr.T - what about High Contrast Copy BW film and Ektachrome Infrared? Did you ever try any of those?